


Guilt 2/30

by imachar



Series: 30 ficlets series [2]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-12
Updated: 2012-03-12
Packaged: 2017-11-01 20:45:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imachar/pseuds/imachar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Giving up the border protection codes isn’t the only thing that Chris has to feel guilty about ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guilt 2/30

**Author's Note:**

> Number 2 of the 30 ficlets series - this one got way from me in terms of length...

Under different circumstances Phil might actually have found the reading glasses that are resting on the bridge of Chris’s nose a little sexy, but right now they just make him look so much older than his fifty-two years. He’s always had a slight astigmatism and it’s always been handled with one of the many variants of Retinax, but the cocktail of SSRI’s, anti-seizure medications, and immunosuppressants, together with the residual toxins in his system make it too risky to add another medication to the mix right now and within the last week his vision has deteriorated to the point that corrective lenses have become necessary if he’s to focus on anything.

Not that Phil is really thrilled that Chris’s focus appears to be on something work related. Certainly the diligent way he’s tapping through the PADD on his lap and making notes on another suggests that he’s working on something both urgent and absorbing. He’s still technically signed off the duty roster, with months of therapy – physical, psychological and occupational – ahead of him before he’s likely to meet Starfleet’s stringent duty fitness requirements. But exceptions are always made when an officer is too valuable, and has too much information, to be allowed to languish on the sidelines in a crisis.

As the only surviving captain from the Battle over Vulcan Chris has been taking visitors from the Admiralty almost since the moment he regained consciousness in his ninth floor suite of the Starfleet Central Medical Complex. And in the past two weeks, since his release from Medical, he’s been consulting on the tactical lessons to be learned from the battle itself, spending hours each day poring through the flight data recorders from the destroyed Home Fleet.

None of it makes Phil happy.

Apart from the physical strain of combining work with multiple hours a day in therapy, the constant reminders of the horrifying carnage that claimed so many friends and acquaintances is doing nothing to further Chris’s emotional recovery, and it’s making sleep near as dammit impossible for both of them. Phil thinks they’ve maybe had forty eight hours total in the last ten days, none of it in stretches longer than two hours and if it goes on much longer he’s going to be tempted to give in and actually start dosing Chris with the sleep enhancers that would put him under for long periods of dreamless rest and give both of them a break.

But not quite yet, because Phil knows Chris well enough to recognize when he’s close to breaking down; to finally allowing himself to feel the grief that he’s been suppressing for the last month and a half, convinced, Phil knows, that he doesn't deserve the luxury of grieving for the things he’s lost, when so many others have lost so much more.

After a few more minutes of unobtrusive observation Phil frowns, he can see the tremors in Chris’s left hand as he scrawls something on the PADD at his side, and he breaks the silence to ask.

“Can I see what you’re working on?”

There’s a long pause while Chris looks at him over the top of the glasses and seems to be considering whether he wants to fight this particular battle, and then he shrugs and his gaze slides away, back to the PADD on his lap. “Sure, whatever.”

Oh, that’s not good…Phil had expected some kind of resistance…that there is none telegraphs a world of meaning, that Chris is too weary, too dejected, too disheartened to care.

Phil picks up his own PADD and remote-logs into Chris’s Starfleet account, grateful not for the first time recently that they trust each other enough to have this kind of access to each other’s private and low-security work accounts. The screen wakes to a read-only version of the file that Chris is working on and even before he takes in the details Phil feels a sharp stab of pain and regret at the list of names that scroll up the screen.

The file is a list of the dead and, as he scans it, Phil thinks for a moment that it’s an updated butcher’s bill. Starfleet still has a small armada of salvage ships combing the debris field above Vulcan and every day names are moved from the MIA to the KIA list – it’s only been a week since the discovery of the bridge flight data recorder from the Newton allowed command to list all of her command crew as officially killed in action.

But as he scans down the list Phil realizes that all the names are ensigns and cadets, the most junior of officers, and he has a sudden epiphany that makes him ache for Chris. He touches one of the names, opens the file and pages through until he comes to the cadet’s induction record. And there it is, in black and white in front of him, at the end of the induction document – Chris’s electronic signature. He picks another name – an ensign this time, someone who graduated the year before – and sure enough, the signature is the same.

He doesn’t attempt to go through all of them, after half a dozen he’s pretty sure he’s stumbled upon the cause of Chris’s current misery, but he scrolls down to the end to get a final tally – one hundred and sixty-eight – and has to swallow around a lump in his throat at the thought of all those suddenly truncated futures.

When he looks up Chris is watching him, silent and utterly wretched, the lower half of his face buried in the crook of his arm as if he’s trying to will away the impending breakdown.

“Oh Jesus, Chris. Why are you doing this to yourself?”

Chris takes a long breath before he can answer, and even then his voice cracks on the opening words. “Because they deserve it, because their families deserve it.” He takes another deep breath and Phil can see the slight tremor in his jaw before he goes on. “Because I have to know who they were, all of them. All the ones I killed.”

The bleakness in Chris’s tone makes Phil catch his breath. They've been dealing with Chris’s sense of guilt and shame over the betrayal of the border codes for weeks, but he is enough of a professional to have already accepted, intellectually at least, that his culpability there was limited. But this present, wrenching misery is a consequence of Chris’s _other_ job, the one that he would have kept until the Enterprise was officially launched; the one that Phil had pretty much dismissed from his consciousness, so busy was he coping with all the fallout from Chris’s final command. He looks across at the now-former XO of Starfleet’s recruiting office and he’s washed with a wave of sadness and curses himself, that he hadn’t seen this coming.

With a sigh Phil lays his PADD on the coffee table, he’ll address the issue of Chris’s culpability in the deaths of those young officers later, but first he wants to know why, after six weeks, this has come to a head now.

“Why now?”

Chris swallows hard and rubs his hands through his hair and down across his face, fingers pushing his glasses out of the way so he can massage his forehead and temples and his voice, when he speaks is achingly desolate and threaded through with guilt and anger.

“Because fucking Barnett decided that the senior staff of the recruiting office should read the roll call of the dead cadets at the Academy memorial next week.”

A flash of anger washes through Phil, so intense that he can’t breathe for a moment. It fades almost as quickly, he knows he’s not being fair, he knows that Barnett is suffering too. Phil can’t imagine what it must have been like to personally contact the family members of every single one of the three hundred and fifty-two cadets who died in those terrible minutes above Vulcan, but right now the Dean of Students isn’t Phil’s principal concern.

He leaves the couch and comes to sit on the arm of Chris’s chair, gently lifting off the glasses and setting them on the end table, sliding an arm around his shoulders and pulling him close. Chris is shivering, barely perceptible tremors vibrating through him as he tries to control his breathing enough to carry on.

“One hundred and sixty-eight Phil, one hundred and sixty-eight dead cadets with my name on their induction papers. One hundred and sixty-eight kids who died because I persuaded them and their parents that Starfleet was their future. Some f-fucking f-future.” The sentence ends on a stutter and a shuddering inhale and Phil rests his cheek on Chris’s head and sets up a firm stroke up his back, his voice a low, soft whisper.

“We purpose not their deaths when we purpose their services.”

It annoys Phil occasionally, his eidetic memory, but there’s nothing he can say that is more fitting than the words Shakespeare put in the mouth of Henry V the night before Agincourt.

“But we did, didn’t we, or at least I fucking did.” Chris’s voice is saturated with self-contempt and Phil kisses the top of his head, trying to impart what little comfort he can as he rationalizes.

“You couldn’t have known that, Chris. Christ, thousands of people retire from Starfleet every year after long, satisfying, happy careers. That’s what you recruited them for, not this; none of us could have had any idea that _this_ was in the future.”

“Do you think that matters a damn to their parents?” Another long tremor shivers through Chris’s frame and Phil can feel the moment he starts to lose control, breath shuddering out as he finishes the thought, his voice breaking on the last words. “I feel like the fucking Pied Piper, I led them away and they died.”

Phil’s gratified that Chris is at least allowing himself the comfort that Phil is offering, leaning in and letting Phil wrap tight around him as the wave of guilt and grief and pain finally washes over him and he clings to Phil as if he’s afraid that he’s going to drown in it.

Adjusting his position on the arm of the chair, Phil settles Chris’s head in the hollow under his chin, fingers curved around the back of his skull, holding him in place even as he strokes gentle circles through his hair. As painful as this is, Phil feels a wave of relief roll through him, he knows how much Chris hates losing control – in part because crying for him has always been more physically exhausting than emotionally cathartic – but the simple release of tension will help him to rest, and just might dispel the nightmares for a while, which will let _both_ of them sleep.

Weeping silently, the only outward manifestation of his distress in the shuddering breaths that whisper against the bare skin at the neck of Phil’s t-shirt, Chris begins to calm, very slowly as Phil almost unconsciously lets his body sway in that innate rhythm that every primate recognizes – safe – secure – home – love. And he whispers quietly – all of his own not inconsiderable self-control engaged so that he doesn’t break down too – innocuous, inconsequential words to anchor Chris and help him find his way out of this morass of misery and regret.

By the time the silent, wrenching shudders have faded to just the occasional hiccoughing tremor Phil’s starting to get stiff and he rubs a firm line up Chris’s back.

“C’mon love, let’s get you to bed and you can sleep for a while, okay?”

****

Phil is as good an atheist as Jesuit training could ever produce, and the unceasing round of memorial services has done nothing to impart comfort to him over the weeks and months since the battle. For him there is no closure to be had in focusing on those who have died, they are dust. But here, on this warm April day outside Cochrane Hall, he is encouraged and amazed once more by the generosity of the living human spirit.

Almost every dead cadet has family at this memorial and it seems as if someone from almost every one of those families has made the effort to stop and exchange words with Chris as they leave the service. Still in his chair, and hating it and the pity that he thinks it invokes, he’s nonetheless made himself available at the top of the long steps, right by the main doors, prepared to take whatever anger and censure he thinks he deserves.

But there is none.

Only gratitude for his guidance, expressions of concern for his recovery and good wishes for his return to active service and above all stories of so many young people who had loved the path he’d helped them choose.

And at the end of the day when he turns out the lights and feels Chris curl into him, both of them peaceful and relaxed as exhaustion pulls them down to sleep, Phil thinks that some measure of forgiveness has been achieved today, and just maybe they are through the worst.

_fin_


End file.
